I think your last sentence is the big clue as to why Maher gets conservative guests where others don't.

Obviously, MIchelle invented the presidential party just to bilk American taxpayers. That shit never happened before she showed up. Apparently, no president ever took a vacation or played golf before, either.

"He'd find the idea that it's genocidal incredibly insulting on a personal level."

It's one of the victims of the truncation of Goblet of Fire, where the Harry/Molly relationship really gets established by Molly's hating on Hermione when it's rumored that she's two-timing Harry with Krum, and Molly showing up at the family day before the Tri-Wizard tournament finale, which is really meaningful in…

It's no coincidence that at the end of PoA, it's Harry and Hermione who go back in time to fix things, without Ron. That's the book that really establishes the fighting/flirting relationship Hermione and Ron have for the rest of the series, and it helps that the narrative also establishes that Harry and Hermione have…

"Prior to the discovery that there was a basilisk in the school, we always assumed that Myrtle died in a tragic fingerbanging accident."

The idea that a you'd have a Room of Requirement in a coed school full of teenagers, and that it would not be constantly in use as simply a bed next to a barrel full of condoms, seems somewhat unlikely.

Yeah, but I think you had it in the previous post: giving Ginny more time (or any other romantic interest for Harry, really) would detract from the relationship that really matters, the platonic one between Harry and Hermione.

This is also how I feel. I have smart people, friends, who put "Thousands of Scientists Now Agree Climate Change is a Hoax!" articles in my feed, and once they've gotten there, I really don't think there's any level of logic that can reach them. It's become a matter of faith and tribal values. The fact that the world…

A company can't really help the echo chamber effect—there's too much competition and Americans' preference for their own affinities is too strong. But a company can, and should, do something about having their service being used as a medium for misinformation or malicious lies. When people think "fake news on…

Puffy had a balloon payment on his house in Southhampton. He wasn't looking long term.

Well, by the time this episode is finally due to air, Trump will have re-established the Sedition Act, which will be NBC's excuse to drop the episode and shut down MSNBC.

Oliver may literally be the only person in America to have given her a second's thought (and in this I include the roughly 1-2 million people the polls estimate will actually vote for her). Yeah, he was arrogant and smug, but that's a feature, not a flaw. Meanwhile, Stein's mealy mouthed response to the 9/11 Truther…

…and Kidder was a little bit older than Reeve! For what it's worth, Lois being or at least acting older than Clark is a big part of the dynamic between the characters, where she's cynical and has seen it all before, while he's a little naive and not as worldly.

This. It was especially weird given how fetishistically Singer stuck to Donner's Superman for every other aspect of the film. Spacey and Routh are clearly doing impressions of Hackman and Reeve with their performances, and then Kate Bosworth does a thoroughly generic damsel in distress performance as Lois, with not…

Art of the Deal replacing Atlas Shrugged would be a great big step up, culturally speaking. Rand's work, while corrosive, is genuinely seductive (particularly to teen boys) and presents a full-fledged worldview. Art of the Deal has no potent philosophy to it and is just really an ad for Donald Trump. I can't see Trump…

I don't think that the problem is really the xenomorph, it's people grafting spare bits of other Sci-Fi cruft onto the franchise. For some reason, someone thought that a wooden monastery planet was a good setting for an Alien movie. Why? It didn't have anything to do with the universe the previous movies were set in,…

Only if it's like a sports score, followed by "Soviets, 0."

"Do we get to win this time?" is probably the motto for all '80s action cinema. Hollywood was sick of tortured survivors like First Blood Rambo. In the 80's movies restored American jingoism by therapeutically creating fictions that had Americans going back to Viet Nam and kicking everyone's asses (first Chuck Norris,…

Arguably no amount of vetting would've uncovered Anita Hill's accusations prior to Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court—there wasn't a public paper trail to follow, and Hill wasn't motivated to speak out against Thomas until he was nominated to the top court. The vetting process is pretty good at uncovering…